


But Consider This

by ninhursag



Series: Michael Guerin Week 2019 [3]
Category: Roswell New Mexico (TV 2019)
Genre: Alex Manes Needs a Hug, Communication, F/M, Idiots in Love, M/M, Maria DeLuca Deserves Nice Things, Michael Guerin Needs a Hug, Michael Guerin Week 2019
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-19
Updated: 2019-09-19
Packaged: 2020-10-21 17:56:18
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,014
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20697647
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ninhursag/pseuds/ninhursag
Summary: In which Michael is in an idiot in love who doesn't think he can keep it, Alex has no idea what he's doing and Maria knocks some heads together so they can finally move on. Together.Michael Guerin week, day three -- dates just limit your options





	But Consider This

**Author's Note:**

> I ship em both, enough said.

After everything, after he finds out about Max after Isobel finally exhales and lets him go, after-- after Alex.

After.

After Michael sleeps for thirty-six hours and is shocked to wake up safe and under a blanket in Maria DeLuca's bed. He sits bolt upright, not understanding where he is at first, if he's seventeen and just woke up warm but with a stranger, if he's twenty-eight but his hand doesn't hurt.

After that, Maria touches his face and his healed hand and says, "talk to me, Guerin."

And he mutters, "I will. Can I have a few days?"

Michael takes Maria out dancing instead of talking because she asks him to. 

He’s not a dancer, his body doesn’t move like that, and he doesn’t care to make it learn. But she asks, smiling up at him, her hands on his. It’s out in the open air, right on a public street where she asks, like she doesn’t give a damn who might be watching and she’s cool with the town fuckup on her arm. 

A couple of days. He can do anything for that long.

“So, this is important to you?” he confirms with a sideways smile.

“Wouldn’t ask you if it wasn’t,” she tells him.

“Well, then I’ll go and dance with you, Maria DeLuca.”

So they go, out of town, where she doesn’t have to be the owner of the bar. There’s ridiculous jangly 90’s alt country playing from the speakers and he twirls her around. She makes it feel smooth, when she spins and hums along to the music. 

It’s an unexpectedly warm feeling. He’s grounded in the music and the feeling of his hands on her hands or spread on the small of her back, in a way he hasn’t been since he was seventeen, with Alex Manes’ legs wrapped around his back. Moored to the earth and held safe in human hands.

It is utterly terrifying, blessing and curse wrapped up together. He knows how this ends.

A few days.

//

He’s never danced with Alex. Gave himself up and took what he was given, every time, but this wasn’t on offer. 

They didn’t go out in public, not but the once at the drive-in and that ended with Jesse Manes’ victory and Michael’s frustration at himself for allowing the hope. 

//

Maria finds out everything. He doesn’t begin the conversation, exactly, but she starts to ask on the second day, so he can’t help but answer.

“You lied to me,” she says, quiet about it. She’s a firecracker, but that’s drowned out now. Her anger is still and runs deep.

He shrugs painfully and meets her eyes. “Lies of omission, but yeah. I’ve never actually told anyone.”

“Alex Manes?” she responds bitterly. “You tell Alex?”

Michael laughs, just as bitter. “Nah. He figured it out himself. If you’d ever come out and asked me like he did before, I could have told you.”

She scoffs, the rage still burning. Oil on water, her skin darkening with it. “Could have? You make it sound like it was out of your control. Like you weren’t the one who made a choice.”

“I’ve never told anyone,” he repeats, willing her to understand but not expecting it. He doesn't himself, not really. “I don’t-- I can’t-- I didn’t know how to, Maria.”

“He’s not speaking to me, you know that? We’ve been friends since the playground, me and Alex, and he’s gonna run when he sees me coming. And you’ve been lying to me.”

Michael's mouth twists. Right, his days are up. Two isn't so bad. “So, tell him we broke up. You two can commiserate on how much it sucked to be with a lying fuck up who is actually ET. It’ll be a bonding experience.”

She glares at him, shaking her head. “Jesus, Guerin, why you gotta act like I’ve got one foot out the door? That ain’t me.”

That made him pause, deflates him instantly. That's not the script. He takes a breath, settles back down and tries to consider what that means. “Ok,” he finally says. “But. You’re mad at me for lying. But also for what I did. I did… I fucked up a lot.”

“Yes, I am. People get mad. All my friends know about aliens. Kyle fucking Valenti knows about aliens. And Rosa-- what you did. Michael, I get to be mad.” She looks him over, a strange expression that he doesn’t really understand on her face. “We get angry at people we love when they fuck up. But we still love them, we don’t walk out on them.”

He just stares at her. There’s a soft, surprised sound he makes that he doesn’t recognize as his own. Wouldn’t have known if it weren’t for her reaction, her eyes. “Not. Not in my experience,” he finally says.

Her eyes go wide and wet and before he quite recognizes it, her arms are wrapped around him. “Damnit, Guerin, that’s not fair,” she hisses, into his shoulder, fingers clamping down on his skin. “You can’t say that.”

“Why?” he asks, letting her hold on and awkwardly patting her back.

“Because now I can’t even be mad at you. And that's not fair.”

His stomach winds itself into confused knots and he's still not sure what to do with his hands but he doesn't argue and she keeps hugging him for a long time.

//

Alex has stars in his eyes when they fuck. He doesn't need to say anything, just the touch of his mouth brings Michael to his knees.

They do it in every hiding place, in the back of Michael's truck in the desert. He covers Alex's skin in blankets and kisses.

When they're seventeen, young and hopeful for a future that won't come.

He takes Alex's dick in his mouth then in his body when they're eighteen and Alex is on leave before deployment. When they're twenty and twenty-two and twenty-five. Snatches of days on leave, or hours mostly. Might be weeks if you string the hours together.

They get bitter over those years and the scars run deeper.

He fucks Alex on his paper thin mattress and in the desert dirt, rocks biting into both their knees but his hands are still as gentle as he can make them.

He doesn't have words for it, he tries with his body, to cover Alex up and keep him close and safe. He's never been able to, trying has only made it worse.

//

Maria asks him to the movies and he laughs and agrees. "Next you're gonna pin me, right?" He says, not quite as mocking as he means it to be.

She rolls her eyes and holds his hands. "Sure, gotta let everyone know we're exclusive."

She says it like it's a joke. Is that a joke? Maybe she's serious. Her eyes are so dark and soft, like… “Wait, we’re exclusive?” he asks.

That makes her smile fade. Right, not the best way to ask that. “Generally, it’s what people who are dating agree to, yeah.”

“Right,” Michael says. He considers this. Considers everything else. “Um. Generally. Like, there are exceptions though?”

She takes a deep breath. “Ok. So. Who else are you fucking?”

“Um. Well, I’m not. But.”

“Is it Alex?”

Michael shrugs with an uneven motion. “I don’t think I could say no if he wanted to. I mean, he might not, so. It might not come up?”

She sighs. “What if he asked you to leave me and make a go with him?”

That makes Michael laugh outright. His head shakes without him thinking about it. “I don’t think he’s interested in that at all, Maria.”

"You-" Her eyes are wide, eyebrows incredulous. "Right, you’re not a reliable narrator, I get that. What if you were wrong and he did ask you anyway?”

Ok. Michael stops to consider that particular impossible scenario. It makes his head hurt and his gut twist. Saying no to Alex? Or Maria? “I mean. I love you, so no. That would be-- no. I couldn’t say no if you wanted to either.”

She takes another breath, then he can hear her softly counting to ten, then back down to zero. “Right. Ok. Right. You idiots are a package deal. Fine, I can handle that.” She tugs at her hair with her hands. “Wait here. Don’t go anywhere without telling me.”

“Why?”

She glares at him. He looks back.

Her hands are on her hips and righteous fire burns in her eyes. She's like an avenging angel for the moderns. Michael has no idea what she's doing..“We can’t have this conversation without the other dumbass. I’m going to go hunt down Manes.” 

He swallows horror. “Maria--”

“No. No. No. I am better than this. I am not going to play along with another ten years of emotional incompetence with you two. That shit stops now.”

//

Alex doesn't meet his eyes when they see each other. Sometimes they share space, for research, Alex with his computers and codes, Michael with his hands and hand made centrifuges.

They have a mission. But Alex won't meet his eyes. It makes Michael's skin prick, longing for a touch that won't come, a gaze that won't connect.

Alex Manes has always had the stars in his pretty black eyes and he still does.

//

When Maria shows up about an hour later, Michael is exactly where she left him, sitting on the sofa. She's more or less dragging a resigned looking Alex by the hand. He's walking unevenly, like his prosthetic leg hurts. She's still got fire in her eyes. 

It's an Alex that looks like he hasn't slept right in weeks. He's wearing a soft, dark hoody, his hair is mussed and just as soft looking and his eyes are rimmed red. Looking like Maria had literally kicked him awake from a nightmare, which was unlikely. That would have gotten her a good dose of inadvertent Captain Manes and his PTSD instead of just plain Alex.

"Alex," Michael whispers.

Alex gives a small, inarticulate shrug.

"Talk," Maria says, firm and adamant.

Alex gives a half almost smile that's just for her before he turns those hopeless, starlit eyes on Michael. "Yeah," he says. "Hey, Guerin. I missed you. Both of you."

Michael swallows. "Yeah. Me too?"

Alex nods. "You guys look really happy. So I'm, um, happy for you, and I wanted you to know that--"

"No," Michael manages, without prompting which makes Maria smile. "I mean, yes, yeah, happy, sure. But. No, stop that."

The exhaustion in Alex's eyes flickers with something else. Irony. Annoyance? Michael stops talking.

Maria sighs. "Michael wants you to stay here. I do too."

Alex blinks at her. "Um. As friends?" He says, as incredulous as Michael still feels about this whole idea.

"As my friend," she replies, gentle and easy. Alex stares and then looks over at Michael with those too familiar red rimmed exhausted eyes. And Michael has always, always wanted to gentle that look off his face. Just it's always made it worse when he tries.

Michael swallows and shakes his head. "I don't wanna be just your friend."

Alex rubs his eyes. His knuckles look bruised and cut, like he's been punching things. "I'm confused," he admits. "And tired."

"I want to put you to bed," Michael says back, more firmly. "And stay with you. And be there when you wake up."

"I-- what?" Alex's hands are shaking. On impulse, Michael reaches out and offers his own hands.

It's an electric shock when Alex slowly reaches out to take them. They're cold, Alex's hands, there's still that tremor to them. Michael presses warmth into them, soothing the palms with his thumbs.

"Stay here, where I can see you, please. Give me… give us a couple days, hear us out. Please. Stay. Please."

And Alex just makes a soft, incoherent noise and shifts. And just like that he's collapsing and Michael has an armful of his strong, scarred body to hold onto as best he can.

Couple of days. He can work with that.

**Author's Note:**

> Find me on dreamwidth @ ninhursag or Tumblr@ninswhimsy.
> 
> Feedback of all sorts feeds me.


End file.
